Year: May 2020

Instrumentation: Solo Piano

Duration: 14:00”

Movements:

I: Red Branches 3:16
II: Lorica 1:46
III: Fomorian Columns 4:22
IV: Alban Hefin, Light of Shore 4:52

Buy Score.

Performance History:

30th Oct 2026 – US premiere by Hana Chu at Kent State University, Ohio
4th Feb 2023 – French premiere of Lorica by Laurent Durupt in Paris
8th Oct 2021 – UK premiere by Cahal Masterson at Queen’s University Belfast
Oct 2021 – 2nd performance by Cahal Masterson at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Oct 2021 – Irish premiere by Cahal Masterson at Castleconnell series, Limerick

Written as part of the Moving on Music Emerging Artist Scheme, a suite of pieces for Northern Irish pianist Cahal Masterson. Each piece engages with a past event, often with mythic or religious overtones, which has in some way shaped the culture and life of Northern Ireland. Recorded for release on my debut album Light of Shore. Available on bandcamp:

Programme Note

Ceaselessly into the past is my second work for solo piano and is an attempt to develop my familiarity with the instrument and its capabilities. I approached this by composing four short movements which play with pianistic textures I enjoy in the work of composers such as Adés, Saariaho, Debussy, and Chopin. The title, a reference to some of the final lines of The Great Gatsby, points towards how each movement draws on a theme of historic, religious, or mythic influence that has shaped the culture and story of Northern Ireland into the country we know today.

The first movement, Red Branches, was part of a moniker adopted by a paramilitary group, the Red Branch Knights, active in Monkstown where I grew up. The name is taken from a group of warriors found in the mythological Ulster Cycle, the most famous of which was Cú Chulainn. Red Branches begins with an aggressive staccato pattern in the low piano register, which gradually expands as it crawls up in register before falling back and dissipating into fragments. In contrast to the violence of this opening movement, Lorica is a Christian prayer for protection, based upon the traditional tune St. Patrick’s Breastplate. The simplest texture in the suite, the tune is presented once with very few alterations, accompanied by wandering and unsettled harmonies that highlight the tense context of this prayer. Fomorian Columns moves towards a more abstract musical process inspired by the hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway. The opening six notes expand and contract from an E-flat, and the harmony in the rest of the movement was generated by rotating these pitches to create different intervallic relationships. This movement contains the most contrasting textures in the piece, exploring wandering polyrythmic passages, Chopin-esque cascades, and bursts of emphatic melodies in octaves. The Fomorians referred to in the title are a race of supernatural beings preceding Fionn mac Cumhaill in Irish mythology. Their association to the causeway is unclear, although its original name, Clochán na bhFomhórach – stepping stones of the Fomhóraigh, suggests a close relationship. The final movement of the suite, Alban Hefin, Light of Shore, expands slightly outside the context of NI: Alban Hefin is of Welsh origin, a name for the summer solstice derived from Haf, the Welsh word for summer. The connection here is a personal one: my maternal family are Welsh and I spent many summers in South Wales as well as a year of my studies. Harmonically, this movement is laser-focused, built entirely of fifths and fourths, giving the music a more open and expansive character than the rest of the suite. Mimicking the gradual dawning of the first light of summer, these chords gradually build up waves of resonance on the piano until culminating in a series of bright, stabbing chords.

Navigate Solo Works